Tuesday, February 8, 2011

I have always been a "dolphin girl." Since I was in high school, dolphins have been my favorite animals. I've read as many books as I could get my hands on. Years ago, I did some dolphin swims, not in a trained dolphin place but where it was more like a natural thing where the dolphins could approach you if they wanted to, but it wasn't like most dolphin swim places, even though they were still in an enclosure. I've always felt that, if I ever did another dolphin swim, it would be in the ocean where they were truly in their own environment. Let's see if the $$$ ever happen for me to do that...LOL!

Somehow, though, in the past few months, I've turned into an "elephant girl" - and no, that's not a comment on my weight! Elephants have become #1 in my animal love space in my heart. I have no idea what happened or why, but I've become sort of obsessed with elephants. It may have been from a book I read part of one day in the bookstore, then ended up ordering from the library, a book called Modoc, The True Story of the Greatest Elephant That Ever Lived, by Ralph Helfer. This was an amazing book about the life of an elephant named, guess what, Modoc....LOL! The main human character was a man who was born on the same day as Modoc, and his father was Modoc's trainer for the circus. They lived most of their lives together, except for a few years when he lost track of where she was. So now I've been watching elephant videos from The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee at www.elephants.com, and checking out and ordering every elephant book I can find from the library. I'm using an elephant as my companion for the Art Journal Caravan - an elephant named Jellie (no clue why I named her that!), when everyone else is using camels. A dear friend of mine gave me, a couple of weeks back, a silver elephant on a chain which I wear often, though not around Jackiebird as she loves to bite through chains around my neck.

So last weekend Santa and I were at the local library, and one of the librarians noticed my necklace, and asked me if I had read the book "Water for Elephants," by Sara Gruen. I had read it a couple of years ago, and loved it! She told me it was coming out in a movie, and I was *so* excited! I searched it out on the web, and found a blog called waterforelephantsfilm.com which has been blogging everything about the upcoming movie, which is coming out April 22...whee, can't wait! Santa said we can see it the day it comes out! It stars Robert Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon, and an elephant whose real name is Rosie. It's set in a circus in, I believe, the '40s, and it is such a beautiful story. I've ordered it from the library so I can read it again - apparently even the author was happy with the screenplay, so hopefully it'll be close to the book. So check it out, should be a great movie - I'm recommending it even without seeing it...LOL!

I also found another amazing book at the library, back to dolphins, called "Beautiful Minds, The Parallel Lives of Great Apes and Dolphins" by Craig B. Stanford and Maddalena Bearzi. Craig has spent his life researching great apes, and Maddalena'a career is as a marine biologist studying dolphins. The book is about the similarities in intelligence of the two species, and also how they are similar to humans. I have just started it, but so far it is amazing.

So there's the story of how I have added another amazing animal to my animal loves. Oh, I forgot to say that my wonderful digital design friend Beth Rimmer has designed for me 3 pink paisley elephants,..LOL! Can't wait to use them on a page!